


Shaking Hands With the Dark Parts of My Thoughts

by CosmoKid



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, M/M, Nightmares, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Season/Series 04, Pre-Slash, Rape Aftermath, References to Depression, SPACE SQUAD, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, kind of, self-destructive behaviour, spacekru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 19:06:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17371646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmoKid/pseuds/CosmoKid
Summary: Everything starts to fall apart as soon as it seems to be getting better. He hates that he didn’t prepare for it; it always happens like this. He should have known good things don’t last. He’s not some naïve kid who believes in happy endings anymore. And yet he’d let himself believe that the Ark would be safe, that it could be home.A look at what happened on the Ark post-season four.





	Shaking Hands With the Dark Parts of My Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> i started this thinking it would not be like that depressing and it was meant to be 1k. that didnt happen  
> it also wasnt meant to be anti-emori because like i love her! less so in season 5 but i loved her before that.  
> title from doubt by twenty-one pilots
> 
>  
> 
> trigger warning:  
> rape aftermath  
> depression  
> suicidal thoughts  
> self-destructive behaviour

Everything starts to fall apart as soon as it seems to be getting better. He hates that he didn’t prepare for it; it always happens like this. He should have known good things don’t last. He’s not some naïve kid who believes in happy endings anymore. And yet he’d let himself believe that the Ark would be safe, that it could be home. 

They’d survived a nuclear apocalypse. He was safe and Emori was safe. He thought he was going to lose her just a couple of days before. He’d begged Clarke to save her, he was seconds away from telling her to use him instead. But they were safe, both of them. The feeling that flooded his system was euphoric, almost. He didn’t think he’d ever be happy again after his Dad was floated. But he was. He was safe and he had Emori and he thought that would be enough. It had to be. They had five years of safety and permanence to enjoy. 

He thought it would be great, at first. He genuinely thought that they would be happy. They spent the first day together in their room, ignoring the outside world. It didn’t matter as long as they had each other. They’d arrived at dinner looking positively wrecked, to the point that Bellamy nearly choked on his rationed food when they walked in. Emori had been embarrassed at first, but all of it had faded when Monty and Harper came in, looking twice as bad. The dinner had been awkward, but there was a shared sense of happiness.

Emori had wanted to explore the Ark after that. It was an unfamiliar place for her and he’d always gotten the feeling that she wanted to explore and discover. So they explored. He gave her the grandest tour he could, shutting his brain off when they got to certain places. She seemed to enjoy it even if he hadn’t. And when he saw her smile like that, well, it made him smile too. 

It hadn’t taken long after that day for it all to fall apart. 

He should have known. He’s John fucking Murphy, he doesn’t get happiness. He doesn’t get good things and when he does, they don’t last long. There’s no happy ending fated for him.

Maybe they’re not meant to work, him and Emori. They’d bonded when they were fighting for their lives, when there was a bigger enemy out there, whether it be starvation, a nuclear apocalypse or just other people. There’s no enemy now; they’re safe and it doesn’t work anymore. He loves her, but it’s not enough. 

Nothing ever seems to be. 

Now that they’re just living, he’s started to notice things she does that upset him. And he knows he’s started to annoy her now that she doesn’t need him to survive. Like how he has to be pushed to ever share anything about himself and how he snaps at people for no discernible reason. He’s always defensive and always ready to run. He’s lived in survival mode his entire life and he can’t turn it off. Maybe he’s not trying. He doesn’t know anymore.

She can’t either. But she doesn’t actively push him away; she just does it without realizing. She doesn’t tell him things. He finds out from Monty that Emori’s been helping Raven with mechanical things and he finds out from Harper that she’s gone out on spacewalks. He finds out from Echo, of all people, where Emori goes when he can’t find her anywhere. He’d tried to ask about it and she’d just said that it’s her business, made it out like he was being unreasonable. 

Maybe he was, but he thought that’s how relationships work. They communicate. He’s opened himself up to her, telling her things he’s never told anyone and she just doesn’t seem to understand why he expects something back. He thought it was meant to be reciprocal. 

It sucks having the only person who likes you not wanting to talk to you. He talks to Raven and Bellamy sometimes when they’re at dinner. Monty doesn’t trust him and Harper still looks a little scared of him. Echo doesn’t talk much. She isolates herself from the rest of them, only wanting to talk to Bellamy. She doesn’t spend her days with him though, he’s seen her wandering the Ark same as him. He doesn’t know what Bellamy does during the day, probably off being a hero somehow.

He shouldn’t be bitter about it. There’s no point. But there’ll always be a part of him that hates the fact that no one ever forgave him for what he did. He knows it was shitty and horrible and terrible and probably unforgivable, but everyone on Earth has done something shitty. He doesn’t get why he’s the one who doesn’t get to be forgiven.

It shouldn’t matter. Not anymore. They’re in the fucking Ark again, he shouldn’t care about this. But he does. Because now that there’s no enemy and nothing to run from, there’s time to think. And he doesn’t like thinking. Thinking means remembering and there’s a lot of things he doesn’t want to remember.

The nightmares start again maybe a month and a half into it. It’s been a while where he’s slept long enough for them to be this bad again. 

They started when his Dad was floated. When Murphy got to see his Dad die right in front of him. When he saw him take what would effectively be his last breath. When he’d cried and screamed and begged for them to let him live. When Murphy lost everything. And every night, when he physically couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore, he’d relive it all. Over and over again.

It’d only got worse when his Mom picked up a bottle and never put it down again. She’d scream and shout him at all hours of the day, telling him he was worthless and useless and the reason his Dad was dead. He became accustomed to the stench of alcohol and sharp words that cut like a knife. He can recognize the smell of whiskey within a millisecond and it still makes him light-headed. It was rare that she’d hurt him physically, but those days came as well. By the time he found her dead in her own vomit, he knew it was his own fault and he knew the nightmares would never go away.

He’d gotten a few days of peace when they landed on Earth. He doesn’t know why the nightmares had calmed down a bit. Maybe it was some cosmic joke. Maybe to convince him he’d be safe before the universe would turn a one-eighty and he’d get hung for a crime he didn’t commit.

He remembers it all. The gasping for air. The flailing around. The utter feeling of hopelessness. The darkness around his vision as he got closer and closer and closer and closer to death. How he’d begged them to believe him. How the makeshift gag had tasted in his mouth. How tight the noose was around his neck. How even as he was strung up, he was pleading with Bellamy to believe him. How he’d kicked the crate out from under his feet. 

How in what he thought was his last moments, he’d accepted it. How he’d thought _fuck it_ and just resigned himself to death. 

Reliving it every night was just the cherry on the cake of trauma.

He supposes he shouldn’t have been surprised when his next bout of traumatic experiences was a day or two later. It’s his life after all. 

The Grounders knew what they were doing when it came to getting information from their enemies. He’d screamed until his throat was raw. And they hadn’t stopped. They’d ripped his nails out, cut him, whipped him, beat him, suffocated him, and a whole host of things he’s buried deep in his mind.

And they’re not even the worse ones. 

By the time he ended up in Polis, being tortured a religious fanatic, he was just fucking done. It didn’t even hurt that much anymore. At first, he thought those months in the bunker had finally driven him insane. He wishes they had.

He never seems to wake up when Ontari is plaguing his dreams. When he’s got that fucking collar around his neck again and she’s fucking reeling him in. And he says _yes_ every time. He doesn’t want to, but she’ll kill him. He doesn’t have a choice. He relives it, night after night, just how he lived it. He remembers how he’d vomit afterward. How he’d felt wrong and dirty. How he felt so useless. How he’d considered just throwing himself out of the tower.

Sometimes he remembers having to pump her heart, how he had to keep her alive. It makes him sick.

Those dreams always end with his screams. Emori’s never in bed when he wakes up screaming. He doesn’t know why and he doesn’t ask. They don’t spend much time in bed anymore. 

Everything reminds him of Polis.

He starts isolating himself after that, he skips meals and sometimes he doesn’t come back to sleep in their room. No one ever comes to find him. He doesn’t know if it makes it worse or not. 

There’s always a plate of food waiting in his room when he skips a meal. He doesn’t ask who leaves it there. Sometimes he waits until dark and puts it back with the rest of the rations. He’s sick to his stomach and they can’t afford to waste food that he’ll just throw up again.

Sometimes, he wonders if there’s something wrong with him. Logically, he knows that not being able to eat indicates something is wrong. He doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know if he cares. 

It’s not just that though. He doesn’t seem to care about anything anymore. He’s becoming reckless again, being cruel and horrible and the angry kid who just wanted his Dad back. And some days, he can’t do anything. He doesn’t feel anything. Everything seems to move in a haze. He wanders around the Ark staring blankly at the walls. It all feels pointless. Everything is meaningless. 

There’s nothing good left for him.

Emori and he can’t seem to have a single conversation without arguing anymore. They fight over everything whether it’s who’s changing the bedsheets to why he didn’t want to go and find her brother to why she took the chip. No one wins, they just make each other miserable. They’re both at the end of their tethers. He’s not foolish enough to think that they can salvage anything out of the car crash that’s their relationship. 

There’s not much to salvage out of his life anymore. 

Rock bottom comes three and half months into it. The algae farm is up and running, and Murphy’s still skipping meals. He makes sure to come to at least every third meal, not wanting to worry them if they would be worried. He doubts it. Emori’s not.

_She’s angry._

“John,” is how she greets him when he sneaks into their room in the dead of the night. She’s sat on the bed, glaring at him. “Why do you keep missing meals?”

He glances around the room, his heart leaping into his throat. Just the tone of her voice makes him want to run away. He doesn’t even know why. He just feels unsafe, like he needs to defend himself or flee. Taking a deep breath, he mutters, “It doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it.”

“What’s this about, John? Is it Polis? Do you miss the food there?” she asks. If he thought for a second she actually wanted to know what was wrong, he knows she doesn’t now. He’s been waiting for this to come up.

“Not this again, Emori, please,” he pleads, trying not to roll his eyes. He doesn’t want to make this situation worse. He’s tired of everything being dialed up to eleven all the fucking time.

“Again? We didn’t talk about it properly the first time and you never gave me a straight answer,” she says, crossing her arms and harshening her glare. 

He sighs, backing up to the door in an attempt to put as much space between them as he can. “What do you want me to say, Emori?”

“I want you to tell me the truth,” Emori says, her voice almost emotionless. 

“Tell you the truth, great. Good to know you didn’t believe me the first time,” he mutters under his breath, glaring down at the floor. He can barely remember a time when his world revolved around the girl in front of him. “What do you want to know? You want to know about how Ontari put a metal collar around my neck and chained me up with it? How she’d scream at me when she was angry? Take it all out on me? How I spent every second terrified for my life? How I had to do everything she said so she wouldn’t fucking murder me or gouge my eyes out like she did to anyone who disagreed with her? What do you want to know?”

Emori stares at him for a few seconds, her gaze narrowing. “Did you or did you not have sex with her?”

“She threatened to kill me, Emor-” he exclaims, but she cuts him off as she stands up.

“Answer the question, John.” 

He stares at her. It’s not in disbelief. She reacted like this last time, but he thought maybe she’d stopped caring about this. He licks his lips and glances around the room. It feels like the walls are closing in around him. He can’t fucking breathe. He’s about to cry when he manages to whisper, “Yes.”

“So you betrayed me,” Emori says simply, taking a step forward. It shouldn’t terrify him, but his heart is beating in his ears and his brain is screaming and everything is too much.

“She raped me, Emori!” he tries to protest, his voice hoarse from fear. Maybe. He doesn’t fucking know.

“Get out,” she says, taking another step forward. He tries to protest again, but she holds up a hand. “Get out of here now or so help me God-”

He doesn’t wait to hear the rest of it, he bolts. He runs out of the room and down the corridor and he just keeps running through endless hallways. He knows how to run away. It’s the only thing he’s good at. 

The only thing he’s good for.

He ends up in a small room on the other side of the Ark. It’s colder than his room, but it’ll do. At least shivering will give him something to do other than stare at the walls and think about how much he hates himself. He doesn’t even know how he got here. He remembers shouting and running and not being able to breathe and that’s it.

Story of his fucking life. There’s always shouting and he always runs away. Ever since that night at the dropship, he hasn’t been able to breathe properly. He always feels like he’s choking out for his last breath. It only got worse when Ontari put that fucking collar around his neck. She’d always tighten it, she probably got off from watching him struggle.

Those memories never seem to go away. He tries forcing them to the back of his mind, but they always resurface. Maybe he deserves it, some cosmic justice for all the horrible things he’s done.

Raven’s right. He’s a leech. He’s no good for anyone. He just gets people killed, like how he killed his Dad. How he killed Charlotte and Connor and Myles. He can’t do anything right other than hurt other people.

He doesn’t leave his little hiding place for dinner that day. Or the day after that or the day after that or the day after that. He doesn’t even know how many days have passed. He stops caring about eating. His stomach growls and the hunger is like a knife, twisting in his gut. He doesn’t care. He deserves the pain. Why should he get the luxury of eating when all he does is cause pain to everyone else? 

Bellamy should have killed him that night, instead of banishing him. He deserved to die.

There’s not much to do in his little room. He can stare at the walls, he can lie on the floor, and he can sleep. So that’s all he does. He relives all his worst memories, screams until his throat is raw, and then he stares at the walls, feeling like he’s going insane. There’s a constant ache in his stomach. He doesn’t mind it. 

Sometimes he cries. It’s weird. He doesn’t feel sad, but he sobs. He cries until there are no tears left, but he doesn’t know why he’s crying. He just does. It normally happens before he falls asleep. It doesn’t feel like he’s crying himself to sleep, but he guesses he is. He doesn’t like doing either. 

He doesn’t like much anymore. He guesses he hasn’t liked much for a long time, he’s just never had the time to think about it. He doesn’t like being alone, but he hasn’t had a choice. Even when he was with people, he felt alone. He doesn’t feel any more alone now than he did when he still showed up to meals.

Something is wrong with him. He doesn’t know what, but something’s been wrong for a long time. It’s all catching up to him now. 

It takes probably a week for someone to find him. He’s guessing how long because he hasn’t got a fucking clue how long. A week just feels right. If he had to guess, he’d say he’s had around seven nightmares or so. 

He knew someone would come eventually, just out of the hero complexes some of them have. He wasn’t expecting the door to open and Bellamy to be standing there, but he guesses it makes the most sense. He’s probably the only one left who can stand him. 

“Hey Bellamy,” he greets, knowing sarcasm is unfounded in this situation. It doesn’t stop him from giving a sarcastic wave.

Bellamy stares at him for a long time. He looks concerned and worried and confused and Murphy is just as confused. He didn’t know Bellamy cared. “Murphy? What happened? Where have you been?”

“Me and Emori got into a fight,” he says and shrugs. Bellamy is staring at him like he’s a puzzle or something. Murphy rolls his eyes and looks up expectantly at Bellamy.  
He doesn’t expect Bellamy to sit down on the floor next to him, but he can probably work with that.

“Yeah, she said,” Bellamy says after a long pause. His face looks a lot more serious now that he’s sitting close to Murphy. It’s also a lot more attractive. “Are you okay? We haven’t seen you for eight days, how bad could it have been? Emori told Raven something about you betraying her?”

The laugh that bubbles up inside him isn’t meant to come out, but it does. “She still saying that then? I don’t know what else she expected me to do.”

“Expected you to do when?” Bellamy presses, keeping his eyes trained on Murphy. It all makes him feel vulnerable and he hates that. 

“Clarke ever tell you why I was in Polis?” he asks Bellamy, leaning back on his hands. Bellamy regards him for a few seconds before shaking his head. Murphy nods, trying to keep his voice casual. He doesn’t want to talk about this, but there’s no other way to explain with Emori’s angry, not without sounding like the bad guy. He doesn’t want to be the bad guy. “Yeah so Lexa’s flamekeeper guy, Titus, he kidnapped and tortured me for information. It uh, you know, it is what it is. But then uh, he wanted to kill Clarke and blame it on me because of something to do with his religion, I think. I’m fuzzy on the details. But he, well, he killed Lexa by accident which you know, brought a lot of problems with it, mainly, uh the uh Ice Nation stuff. We were meant to sneak out of Polis, me and Clarke, but she didn’t want… she didn’t want uh, she didn’t want Ontari to get the flame. So we sneaked back in to get it and well, it uh didn’t go well. She found us. Titus sent me to give uh, to give Ontari a bath so she could be cleansed or whatever. He needed to give Clarke the flame to find Luna. She was meant to come back for me. She didn’t. Titus promised he’d get me out as soon as he could and then uh he got his throat slit so that didn’t really work out.”

He has to stop so he can take a breath. It’s hard to breathe again. He can’t look at Bellamy, not if he wants to finish the story. He can feel Bellamy staring at him. He clenches his eyes shut for a few seconds. Before he can continue, he feels Bellamy put a hand on his knee, some sign of support he guesses. He opens his eyes and stares down at it for a bit. It shouldn’t make him feel safe, it’s just Bellamy’s hand. It does. 

“Ontari was gonna kill me too. I knew she didn’t have the flame and that made me dangerous, but I uh managed to talk my way out of it, promised I’d be her fake flamekeeper. I don’t know why she agreed to it, but she did. She thought I was going to help her. I don’t know if I did, I don’t know if I wanted to, I just wanted to survive. It was, it was horrible. I was always aware that if I fucked up, she’d slit my throat or throw me out of the tower window and I’d be dead. There were no second chances. There never is. But I managed. And then uh, then… At this point, me and Emori were, were together, you know? I think that’s part of why I wanted to stay alive so much. But uh anyway, night came. And when it was just the two of us alone in her, in her chambers, she’d put this fucking collar around my neck. It had a chain attached. I couldn’t even breathe properly with it on. She didn’t care. She liked tightening it, watch me gasp for air. But yeah, she uh she started undressing and she grabbed the chain and started pulling. I tried, I tried to protest. I tried to stop it. But she told me that she’d kill me if I didn’t. And I didn’t want to die. I tried to tell myself it would be over soon enough and that I was just doing what I had to survive, but I just, God, I…”

The words stop falling out of his mouth without him realizing. He’s sobbing now. And then he’s being pulled into a warm embrace and he can’t help clinging on like a child. He’s crying into Bellamy’s shoulder as the older boy hugs him tight and he just can’t stop sobbing. He’s just so tired. 

“Emori thinks I betrayed her,” he whispers, sniffling. He’s ruined Bellamy’s shirt already. He pulls away, but Bellamy keeps his arms around Murphy. He’s practically sat in his lap now. “Ontari, Ontari _raped_ me, repeatedly. Night after fucking night and Emori told me I betrayed her, told me to get out of the room… I can’t sleep because of it, because I keep reliving it in my dreams and I just, I can’t. I can’t do it.”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Bellamy says in a soft tone. He reaches out to push some hair out of Murphy’s face. His vision is getting a little blurry now. He tries to nod, but he feels himself swaying. “Murphy, hey, are you okay? Murphy?”

He’s not, evidently. Considering he passes out in Bellamy’s arms.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed next time he wakes up, but he’s not in his room or Emori’s room. He’s in a bed as well. He pushes himself up to a seated position, looking around the room, trying to piece together where exactly he is.

It doesn’t take long to figure that out. About ten seconds when Bellamy walks into the room, looking like he hasn’t slept in days. “Hey, how are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he says shortly. Bellamy crosses his arms and looks down at Murphy almost sternly. He huffs, “Tired. I’m tired.”

Bellamy nods. “Monty reckons you passed out because of hunger. When was the last time you ate?”

“Last time I came to dinner,” he admits. There’s no point in lying. He’s already told Bellamy the one thing he’d promised himself he’d never tell anyone. 

“That’s uh, that was a long time ago, Murph. You really scared us all there,” Bellamy tells him, uncrossing his arms. His gaze is softer now, but Murphy doesn’t really believe him. He can tell that Bellamy knows too based on him rolling his eyes. “I’m serious. Everyone here has done bad things to each other, none of us can judge each other anymore.”

Murphy nods. He doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t say anything. Bellamy gets the point because he starts speaking again, “You hungry now?”

He shakes his head, he can’t stomach eating right now. “I’m just tired. What time is it?” 

“Eleven at night,” Bellamy tells him, clearly trying to hide himself stifling a yawn. “You should get some sleep.”

“So should you. You look like you haven’t slept in days,” he tells Bellamy who just shrugs and looks a little sheepish. “I’m taking up your bed, aren’t I? I can go.”

“No, don’t, it’s fine, I can take the couch,” Bellamy says immediately. Murphy’s not even sure he got his last word out before Bellamy started speaking. 

He sighs and gives Bellamy a flat look. “I’m not letting you sleep on the couch while I take up _your_ bed.”

“Murphy,” Bellamy starts, stepping forward. “You passed out in my arms and then slept for a day and a half. I really don’t think you should try moving until you’ve at least eaten something. Please, just stay in the bed. I don’t want you hurting yourself anymore.”

He blinks. He wasn’t expecting that. He stares at Bellamy, not really able to believe that he’s about to suggest this, “I really don’t want you to have to take the couch, Bell. We could share?”

It’s Bellamy’s turn to stare now. He looks confused and lost and like the world doesn’t make sense anymore. It doesn’t. They’re back on the Ark and they’re not arguing. He doesn’t know how long it is until Bellamy murmurs, “Okay.”

Murphy scoots over, making room for Bellamy. It’s not exactly a double bed, but it’s big enough to fit more than one person comfortably. It’s not exactly comfortable when Bellamy first gets in, both of them clearly not knowing what to do. He knows Bellamy is exhausted and this trying not to upset the other is going to take forever so he just takes a deep breath and lies back down in the bed. It doesn’t take long for Bellamy to follow his example. 

Still, neither of them sleeps at first. Murphy tries, but he’s so aware of Bellamy lying next to him. Back when they first landed, it was practically his dream to sleep next to Bellamy, but now it just feels weird. Like he wants to be closer to him, but he’s scared. 

“Hey, Murphy,” Bellamy whispers after a few minutes of awkwardness. “This is probably going to sound weird, but can I uh, can we, can we cuddle?”

It takes probably a bit longer than socially acceptable for him to process that, but he does eventually. “Okay.”

He’s not surprised when he ends up being the small spoon in the situation, but he is surprised by how much safer he feels within seconds. Having Bellamy’s arms around him feels like he’s in a safe haven. It’s everything he’s ever wanted but never knew. 

And for the first time in a long time, he sleeps peacefully.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)
> 
> come cry with me on [tumblr](https://cosmo-k-i-d.tumblr.com/%22)  
> 


End file.
